Anthony Pompliano: Bitcoin | Lex Fridman Podcast #171

The following is a conversation with Anthony Pompliano, entrepreneur, technology investor, prolific writer, podcaster, and Twitter user on topics of finance, cryptocurrency, technology, and economics. I highly recommend his popular podcast and daily letter called the Pomp Podcast and the Pomp Letter. Quick thank you to our sponsors, Theragun Muscle Recovery Device, Sun Basket meal delivery service, ExpressVPN, and Indeed hiring website. Click their links to support this podcast. As a side note, let me say that I'll be having many conversations in the coming months about cryptocurrency with people of all kinds of backgrounds and worldviews. Those who are proponents of Bitcoin, like Anthony, Nick Carter, Robert Breedlove, Alex Glasstein, and many others, and those who are proponents of other cryptocurrency technologies, like Vitalik Buterin, Charles Hoskinson, Richard Heart, Sergey Nazarov, Sylvia McAlley, and many others as well. I'm not framing this as a debate. I'm simply looking to explore exciting ideas in the space of technologies that could very well change human civilization and AGI civilization as well. I appreciate that some communities are a bit more intense in their style of communication than others, but I personally am only interested in open-minded, respectful collaboration in exploring ideas. I personally try to, like to approach conversations by considering that I may be wrong about everything and am looking to learn. I won't engage in group think, social signaling, outrage mobs, mocking, and derision. If you do, I understand. It's just not my thing. I send you my love either way and hope to meet you in person over some drinks, some good laughs, and a good conversation one day. No matter the difference in style or substance, we're all just human after all. This is an amazing ride we're all on together. Buy the ticket, take the ride, as Hunter S. Thompson said, whether you pay for that ticket with Bitcoin, Ethereum, the dollar, gold, seashells, a beer, or just a good old smile. This is the Lex Fridman podcast and here is my conversation with Anthony Pompliano. You served in the US Army for six years and spent 13 months in Iraq in 2008 and '9. Can you tell the story of why you joined the Army and what were some of the moving, difficult, and maybe lasting experiences from the time you served?

Sure. I joined when I was, uh, 17 years old. Uh, I needed my parents to, uh, basically sign, uh, in order to, uh, to join, and, uh, I graduated a semester early from high school and, uh, thought I was gonna go play football in college and kind of enroll in the spring semester, and when that didn't happen, uh, basically was working at, uh, Chick-fil-A and Quiznos and-

(laughs)

... had in my mind, "Look, this is probably not the, uh, the path in life that I want." Um, and so I knew I was gonna go to college, I knew I was gonna go play football in the fall, but I had this window of time. And so I walked into a recruiting office and just basically was like, "I'm assuming you guys need some help." (laughs) And, uh, you know, they gave me the whole pitch and, uh, you know, "Give you a signing bonus. You can go jump out of planes and go do all this crazy stuff." I just said, "Okay, let's do it."